In old times, when kings occasionally wanted to know the real opinion of their people, they asked their fool, and it has become a proverb that “fools tell the truth while laughing.” But the court jester is not always an agreeable man, and it is also said that before he teaches you the maxim he “will annoy and pester.” Thus we may suppose that these were of different kinds.

Darwin, after a most comprehensive and searching investigation of the phenomena of life and variation, came to the conclusion that “man is the co-descendant with the other mammals of a common progenitor,” and still “bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.” With the immense and varied ancestry man has had, and the infinitude of his connections with the rest of the animal world, “atavism,” i.e., inheritance of characteristics from remote, not from the more immediate ancestors, is a very interesting subject of study. The presence of supernumerary nipples in man may be cited as an example of atavism. This abnormality has been noticed by me in four patients during five years' observations in the hospitals in this country. In some parts of Central and Eastern Europe a very high percentage of men is said to possess this abnormality. This characteristic is absent in apes, baboons, and monkeys, who are men's immediate successors, but is found in lemurs, an order of mammals lower in order. The rare occurrence of multiple births in women is a characteristic which is reversion, or atavistic towards the condition normal in lower vertebrates.

During the first twelve months of the admission of patients to the mental wards of the Lord Derby War Hospital there were 2,429 admissions and 1,466 discharges. The average number of admissions per month was 202, and the average number of discharges per month was 122. To those who have devoted their time to the admission and discharge of mental cases in large asylums in peace time these numbers alone will convince them that the condition of things must be very different to what they have been accustomed. The enormous amount of work in investigating these cases will also, I am sure, be appreciated, and those who, in addition, have any knowledge of Army Forms and the preparation of these before the final discharge of a patient from hospital will realise the amount of routine necessary before these 1,466 patients could be discharged.